The Hidden Agenda; Katanga: The Untold Story; Red Vs. Black In South Africa

These three political documentaries are all presented by G. Edward Griffin, a man with a penchant for controversy. He is the author of the infamous World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17, the 1974 story of the "suppression" of the wonder drug Laetrille, a drug no longer regarded as wondrous at all. Mr. Griffin has also written about the John Birch Society and Communism. You might say he's a very pro-capitalist, anti-communist, anti-bureaucracy kind of guy. The first program, The Hidden Agenda is an interview with the late Norman Dodd, conducted in 1982. In 1954, Dodd was the staff director of the Congressional Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations. In failing health at the time of the interview, Mr. Dodd is surprisingly lucid, yet not terribly cogent. He reminiscences about his early days in the banking world of the late 20s and early 30s, relating tales that sound kind of ominous but don't make a lot of sense. Eventually Mr. Dodd gets around to tax-exempt foundations, and informs us that the Ford, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations are all working in harmony to control education in the U.S. so that they can "alter American life to comfortably merge with the Soviet Union." The "evidence" for this amazing assertion was compiled by one Catherine Casey whose dictaphone transcriptions of foundation board meetings apparently no longer exist, and Ms. Casey herself "lost her mind" some time after the investigation. To say that The Hidden Agenda is total bunkum is a bit of an understatement. Katanga--The Untold Story is better, though seriously dated. A 1962 documentary presented by former congressman Donald L. Jackson revealing the "truth" about the U.N.'s involvement in the state of Katanga's (now Shaba) secession from the Central Congo (now Zaire). Today, there is little question that the U.N.'s use of arms in the suppression of Katanga was both an ethical breach and a serious mistake. Yet the rhetoric of the documentary reduces the Katangese debacle to little more than a capitalist vs. communist argument. The main character, then President Moishe Tshombe, is portrayed as a pro-Western values leader who was trampled. Later historical accounts have allowed that Tshombe might have been an amoral, though brilliant, opportunist. The final documentary in the trio, Red Vs. Black in South Africa, an interview with Tamsanqa Linda, the Mayor of Port Elizabeth Township, is the most interesting. The main thrust of the program is to tell the American public that they have been blinded by all the press on apartheid. Linda maintains that South Africa's primary problems are economic and political, not social, and goes on at some length about Nelson Mandela's Communist sympathies as well as the Communist base of the ANC (African National Congress). Unfortunately, while some of Linda's commentary is thought-provoking, "the hidden agenda" of anti-communism rears its boring head enough times to discredit much of what he says. Mandela, Bishop Tutu, and Jesse Jackson are all simply dismissed as "Marxist stooges." And Linda, skeptical of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, still believes that Moscow intends to run South Africa (a rather weak theory today). While good political documentaries espousing a variety of viewpoints belong in public library collections, these far-right diatribes do not measure up. None are recommended. (Available from: American Media, P.O. Box 4646, Westlake Village, CA 91359.)